After the Apple  Before the Fall
by MightyMightyMunson
Summary: A series of short stories about how our favorite characters from Forks prepare for the wedding of Bella Swan and Edward Cullen. Rating will vary from story to story


**Transitions **

Story Timeline: Five days before the wedding

Characters: Charlie Swan, Bella Swan  
Rating: PG-13 (For the occasional cuss word coming from Charlie and the mention of crotchless, see through underthings with strategically placed tassels)

"Bella?" Charlie called as he walked through the front door, home from work after a very, very long day. "You home?" His back aching, he made a bee line for the couch, collapsing on the faded, time compressed cushions, stifling a curse as he bent down to fumble with his muddy boots.

"Hi Dad," Bella's voice filtered down the stairs. Charlie glanced up; his soggy boot laces forgotten as his daughter came lurching down the steps, in her sweet, ungainly way. When she'd been a little kid, and perpetually covered in band-aids and bruises, both he and Renee had had assumed that her awkward stage would pass, that she'd grow into herself and become less accident prone.

This of course had never happened. Bella grew up, but never grew into herself. Renee had once remarked that Bella's spirit was several sizes too small for her body, and that was why she was so ungainly. Of course this wacky statement from his ex-wife had come after Renee had immersed herself in yet another of her three week long spiritual retreats and was also spouting dip shitty nonsense like "auras" and "wavelengths" and the ever ubiquitous "finding your authentic inner-self" so he'd not paid much attention to her musings at the time.

But tonight, as Charlie watched his Bella move toward him, he began to wonder if Renee just might have been onto something. His heart skipped a beat, no; make that several as he noticed that his daughter had obviously been out shopping and engaging in all sorts of mysterious womanly activities with Alice Cullen again. Every time his little girl went off adventuring with the black haired pixie of the Cullen clan, she came back a little different, a little less of a gawky teenager and a little more of a sophisticated woman. To be honest, he wasn't sure quite how he felt about that.

Tonight was no different.

Her hair…looked different, shinier, and more feminine somehow. It was bouncy and flouncy and all sorts of other adjectives that had no place in the mind of a man who thought high fashion was making sure that your fly was up and your socks matched. Charlie noticed with no small degree of surprise that his little girl was wearing make up, that her eyelashes seemed longer and her cheeks and mouth were not quite so pale. She looked…very pretty, he decided as his girl bent down and gave him a hug. His nostrils twitched slightly.

_When in the hell did Bella start wearing perfume?_ He could smell the faintest hint of ivory soap on his daughter's skin as he hugged her back. This was the smell he was used to. It was a clean, wholesome sorta smell. Overlaid atop this, there was the subtle scent of wildflowers, mixed with something darker, something alluring and dusky.

Charlie blushed then, his stubbly cheeks turning a ruddy, embarrassed red as he pulled away from his little girl, appalled that he'd been sniffing her perfume like some sort of weirdo. "You went shopping again?" he asked, trying to sound indifferent, his voice not quite as steady as he wanted it to be.

Bella looked at him, at his red face, and then looked down at the floor, her pretty features clouding with what Charlie could only assume was disappointment. "Umm…yeah. Alice took me shopping for…" she stopped speaking all together for a moment, her own features suffusing with color as her hand made vague hand movements around her face and hair. "….you know, stuff for the wedding."

"Oh. Right." Charlie grimaced at the mention of the dreaded "W Word", his face souring up as though he'd just sucked a lemon. "Wedding stuff. I see." Not quite knowing what to say, he bent down and began untying his boots once again. "So, what did you end up buying?" This was a safe sort of question to ask, Charlie thought as the pulled off one muddy shoe.

"Well, I got a hair cut…really it was more of a trim," Bella muttered as she knelt down beside her father, and helped him pull of the second boot. "And I bought some new mascara…."

"Mascara?" Charlie pulled off one water logged sock and then the other.

"You put it on your eyelashes, to make them look longer and fuller." Bella explained, her cheeks flushing pink again. "Alice said that it would help my eyes show up better in the wedding pictures."

"Oh. Right." Charlie hazarded a quick glance at Bella's dark brown eyes and noticed that indeed, her lashes (which he thoughts were already quite nice, thank you very much) did indeed seem to be longer looking. "So you bought some mascara. That makes sense. I guess." He picked up his muddy boots and headed back towards the front door. "What else did you get?"

"I tried out some perfume." Bella muttered self consciously.

"So I noticed," Charlie muttered right back.

"You don't like it."

"I didn't say that," Charlie protested, gripping his boots so hard that his knuckles cracked. "You smell…" He paused uncomfortably, feeling like he was teetering on an estrogen laden abyss. "…you smell…nice. I'm just well…you know…"

He forced a smile onto his face, trying to be the supportive, wise to the mysterious ways of woman shopping, sort of father that his only daughter deserved. "So you got some mascara, and tried some perfume and got a hair cut. Good for you kid! Did you do anything else?"

"Well, we went shopping for…" Bella went beet red at this point and muttered a word that sounded to Charlie like "Monterey" as she bent down and tried to wipe the mud from his boots off the front room floor.

"Huh?"

"I said…" Bella took a deep breath, and assumed the facial expression of someone about to step right in front of a run away bus. "…we went shopping for lingerie."

"Holy crap cakes!" Charlie dropped his boots and whirled about, his wild eyed expression enough to send Bella skittering into the kitchen. "I don't want to know about you buying…" His face contorted while his hands, made frantic circles and swivels. "…that kind of stuff!" In Charlie's mind, "that kind of stuff" was invariably bright red, see though, sinfully crotchless and covered with strategically placed tassels.

His mind also couldn't help but coming up with some rather disturbing mental images of a certain ginger haired young man doing his level best to remove said bright red, see through tassel covered crotchless undergarments. The thought was enough to make the veins in Charlie's neck and face bulge out in a most menacing fashion.

"Well…well you asked!" Bella huffed indignantly as she came stomping out of the kitchen with a wet mop to clean up the muddy mess, her face nearly as red as the scandalous lingerie of her father's imagination.

"I'm sorry that I did!" Charlie huffed right back as he and his muddy boots retreated back outside. In his mind, standing outside in his socks getting soaked by a rain storm was far preferable to having a discussion with his daughter about make up and unmentionables.

_Three and a Half Hours Later…_

It was late…way too late for a cop who had the early rotation the next morning to be still up. Feeling nearly as worn out as his faded flannel, ancient of days bathrobe, Charlie shuffled into the bathroom, took care of his pre-bedtime business (though it should be noted that he defiantly left the lid up) and shuffled back out and into the kitchen.

He sighed, crinkling his nose in distaste at the still rather strong odor of carbonized scrambled eggs and toast and the sight of a heat scorched pan and dirty dishes lying abandoned in the sink. It was an odd in a decidedly unpleasant way, to see and smell his kitchen like this.

_Kinda reminds me of how the house used to look…_Charlie frowned and turned away from the lonely stack of dirty dishes that he'd created, shoving his hands in the threadbare pockets of his robe as she shuffled out of the kitchen and into the living room.

He's grown complacent…spoiled even, since his daughter had moved back to Forks. Where before he'd had to rely on his piss poor cooking skills (he was to the culinary arts what Bella was to grace and coordination) when he'd been by himself, with Bella around, he'd always been able to look forward to coming home to a clean house and warm, tasty meal. _I suppose I'd better get used to it…_

Scowling now, he flopped down on the couch and reached for the one great and constant comfort in his life, the remote control. With a press of a button, and a quiet click and a hiss of static, the TV turned on. For several minutes, Charlie surfed through the channels, his calloused thumb clicking away.

There wasn't anything on, not anything worth watching anyway, not tonight, not after he'd had a row with his kid. Charlie swore under his breath and his thumb clicked a few more times until he got sick of the seeing the same damn programs over and over again and decided to settle on the late night news. It was the same old story: some politician got caught with his hands in the congressional cookie jar, another one got caught with his pants around his legs. There was flooding in one part of the world, drought in another.

Charlie rolled his eyes as the entertainment newscaster commented on the latest booze induced antics of a celebrity, he snorted as the bleach blond weather girl (Bella would have pointed out that the correct term for such a person was _meteorologist)_ announced in a chirpy voice what any long time resident of Forks already knew. That is was going to be a rainy, overcast week. So what else was new?

Charlie sighed and with a final, bored click of his thumb turned the TV off. Watching the news by himself was not nearly as entertaining as watching it with his kid. Bella, now…she made the news interesting, what with the way that she commented about the issues at hand. She was a perceptive girl and saw the world through a decidedly different lens than he did. In a way, she kind of reminded him of Renee when she'd get all bent out of shape about what was going on, expect that Bella's arguments and ideas were fashioned out of far firmer stuff. She _cared_ about holes in the ozone layers and educational mandates and had all sorts of _ideas_ about the worth of souls and the power self determination. His daughter, she was smart, damn smart in fact, and he loved listening to her talk to him about could and _should_ be done to make things better.

Watching the late night news…hell, watching anything with his brown eyed girl was an experience in and of itself. Watching it without her…_Being without her…_Charlie looked around the empty living room, listened to the silence permeating through the house and wondered how long it would take him to get used to being alone again.

She was leaving him, leaving him like her mother left him, leaving him behind because she found someone better, someone smarter, someone she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Charlie dropped the clicker. The back of it broke, spilling four AA batteries out onto the floor. He didn't bother picking them up.

The fact that Bella was leaving him for a ginger haired, pale faced, Volvo driving doctor's boy who'd already done one hell of job breaking her heat pissed him off to no end. The fact that he wasn't enough of a man…wasn't enough of a father…to let her go without throwing a fuss (even though she was too young, and could do so much better for herself than that Cullen boy) and preferred sending her running off to her room, red faced and in tears rather than suck it up and talk about see through underthings and goopy crap that you put on your eyelashes, well that didn't sit well with him either.

After doing a fair bit of grunting and groaning as he extricated himself from amongst the couch cushions, and engaging in some mental pissing and moaning as he slowly climbed up the steps, Charlie came to Bella's bedroom door, and with a very soft knock, and a very hesitant prayer to whatever Saint it was that interceded on the behalf of fathers who were way in over their heads, he opened the door and went inside...


End file.
